Hobo Spokesman

At Lilly's request this evening, I opened up Weather.com to check tomorrow's forecast. She wanted to see if she could wear shorts tomorrow, as she did today in the afternoon (though it wasn't quite the 70° F. promised). The answer was maybe not. As for Saturday, maybe snow.

But that wasn't what made me laugh. Laugh out loud, even. An ad for mortgage refinance appeared on the page, one clearly trying to smash the paradigm of featuring good-looking young people in advertising. A face appeared with the text that wasn't ugly, exactly, just more disheveled than usual, an older man with an enormous head of gray hair and a large gray beard.

"He's a hobo," Lilly said.

That made me laugh. Thinking about it now, I see her vocabulary acquisition at work; I remember her asking about the word not long ago, which she might have heard while not-really-listening to an episode of Mad Men called "The Hobo Code."

Anyway, what's the subtext of the ad? Refi your mortgage or you risk living under a bridge with this guy?